Sitting at the bar last week, I noticed we were batting 6 for 6 on iPhones. 3 of us bought the iPhone 4 last year as our first smartphone, and and other 3 bought the 4S after waiting for it to be available on their carrier. All of them switched from Androids and BB’s bought within the last 2 years.

These guys are not Apple Evangelists like me, just regular twenty/thirty somethings that want a nice phone. They found their Android and BB experience lacking, and made their own decision to switch.

As Eric says, multiply me by a million, and you’ve got a market. 30 million iPhones this quarter is in the bag.

The New York Times is flaunting the growth of its digital editions in full page ads in the printed paper. They break down app downloads between iPhone, Android and iPad. Despite Android’s lofty activation numbers, the iPhone app download outnumbers the Android download number 6 to 1.

Further evidence that the iPhone market share is closer to its iPod market share in terms of consumer use. And whatever consumers actually use translates to profits, and influence with advertisers, content owners, etc. Android is barely making a dent in the business that counts.

The New York Times is flaunting the growth of its digital editions in full page ads in the printed paper. They break down app downloads between iPhone, Android and iPad. Despite Android’s lofty activation numbers, the iPhone app download outnumbers the Android download number 6 to 1.

Further evidence that the iPhone market share is closer to its iPod market share in terms of consumer use. And whatever consumers actually use translates to profits, and influence with advertisers, content owners, etc. Android is barely making a dent in the business that counts.

Good points, macorange.

I’ve noticed more articles now point out the difference between shipped and sold. Hopefully they’ll start to focus on the difference between activated and sold.

The other distinction that few bother to emphasize is usage patterns. Symbian & Blackberry smartphones are still selling in large numbers, but few of them are used much for apps & web browsing. I think many of the Android activations fall into this category of smartphones. These types of devices do not lock-in users to the ecosystem and do nothing do build the vaunted “network effect” certain pundits claim large market share will develop.

The New York Times is flaunting the growth of its digital editions in full page ads in the printed paper. They break down app downloads between iPhone, Android and iPad. Despite Android’s lofty activation numbers, the iPhone app download outnumbers the Android download number 6 to 1.

Further evidence that the iPhone market share is closer to its iPod market share in terms of consumer use. And whatever consumers actually use translates to profits, and influence with advertisers, content owners, etc. Android is barely making a dent in the business that counts.

Good points, macorange.

I’ve noticed more articles now point out the difference between shipped and sold. Hopefully they’ll start to focus on the difference between activated and sold.

The other distinction that few bother to emphasize is usage patterns. Symbian & Blackberry smartphones are still selling in large numbers, but few of them are used much for apps & web browsing. I think many of the Android activations fall into this category of smartphones. These types of devices do not lock-in users to the ecosystem and do nothing do build the vaunted “network effect” certain pundits claim large market share will develop.

I did a quick google search on “embedded android” and found a number of companies offering services and products that embed android into their products. None of these are smart phones. I would assume each of these needs to be activated, and counted. I don’t know how large a percentage of activations this is though.

Android Developers Praise Ice Cream Sandwich’s User InterfaceAndroid 4 unifies the OS and the SDK for both smartphones and tablets, replacing the Android 2.x OS for smartphones and the Android 3.x OS for tablets…

The lack of Android 4-capable hardware is a limiting factor to developers. “The emulator that’s currently with the SDK is gruesomely, painfully difficult to work with,” Ashrafi says. One reason is that they can’t yet test on actual devices. That makes it difficult to implement some new technologies...

Another issue is that many, if not most, current Android devices will not be upgradable to Android 4, limiting the number of customers that can use Android 4’s new capabilities for some time. (The first Android 4 device, Samsung’s Nexus Galaxy, is due to ship in November—in Asia.)

That’s pathetic and inexcusable. All, ALL 1 GHz Android smartphones, including the Nexus One, should be able to run Ice Cream Sandwich, no excuses. That would be many, if not most Android smartphones currently in use.

Apple would get every bit as much scorn from me if the iPhone 4 couldn’t run iOS 5.

I mean hey, the allegedly ~ 600 Mhz, last-last-gen tech iPhone 3GS can run iOS 5. What ever happened to fast following? I just see tons of Gingerbread phones being left behind.

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Thanks, Steve.

Nice article Rob. Although most of us in the Appleblogoshpere who keep our eyes on the ball knew how important this was, it’s good to see the MSM catching on.

It will be very interesting to see how this plays out and how much the 3GS slices into the cheap Android market. I honestly believe that this simple, largely unnoticed move may be the the straw that breaks Android’s back.

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Even by Android fans’ standards, the Droid Razr earns a thumbs down. Here are excerpts from a partial review. Moto only allowed them one day to review the phone, so battery life is still a question. The first bullet is what matters most to Android fans.

? ...the RAZR won?t get Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich until sometime next year. That?s hard to take, especially since we?re expecting Verizon will launch the Galaxy Nexus with 4.0 in the next few weeks. And even when the RAZR does get ICS, you?ll forever be stuck with those four capacitive buttons at the bottom of the screen as Google moves Android away from them entirely.

? $300 with a two-year contract

? ...the RAZR?s screen looks pretty bad. Super AMOLED panels use the inferior PenTile pixel arrangement, and the RAZR?s 256dpi pixel density doesn?t hide it ? in fact, it seems to make it worse. Not only are individual pixels readily apparent, but text looks jaggy, there?s red fringing around vertical lines, and images seem to de-res when scrolling in the browser.

? But while the RAZR might be thin, it?s not small ? it?s rather huge, actually, with a ton of padding around its 4.3-inch display…I have large hands and I found one-hand operation difficult; if you have small hands it?ll be basically impossible.

? Motorola?s dropped the “Motoblur” and “Blur” branding for the skin it puts on its high-end smartphones, but this nameless evil is still to be feared…things have gotten substantially worse with every subsequent Motorola device. The current version of Moto?s skin is overwrought, fussy, and confusing in many places…

? ...I did notice a fair bit of occasional lag in the web browser, although it was inconsistent…

? The 8-megapixel camera on the back…takes reasonably good photos when everything is perfectly in order, but the slow autofocus and relatively poor low-light performance doesn?t make that easy…

? Motorola only gave us but a single day to review the RAZR, so we’ll have to see how the battery holds up over time, but in average use the RAZR?s battery held up as well as any other LTE device…The 1780mAh battery is…sealed in ? you won?t be able to quickly swap it if you?re a serious road warrior.

Making malware is easier with Android software because the applications aren?t checked, the source code is open and the apps can be sold on external sites…Of the thousands of infected Android apps, 55 percent contain spyware, which can gather data from phone use…?Applications can do anything,? Latha Maripuri, a director of security services at IBM, said in an interview. ?They can access your bank account through the data that you may have stored on your e-mail. They can access whatever company data you?ve uploaded. We?ve really seen a rise in threats and we expect this to grow.?

Juniper doesn?t have numbers for malware on Apple?s operating system because cases are rare, Hoffman said.